I'm rerunning this post in honor of the late, great Les Paul. For more information, Click Here.

Question Everything

Curiosity may be the primary ingredient for imagination innovation. It made Leonardo da Vinci the quintessential renaissance man. In his book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael J. Gelb lists curiosità: “An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning” as the first of his seven Da Vincian principles. A later book, Innovate Like Edison, advises readers to “seek knowledge relentlessly.”

Albert Einstein famously said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” But he also warned, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Maybe dropping out of high school allowed Les Paul to pursue his curiosity and develop the electric guitar and the recording innovations of overdubbing and multitrack recording. In the documentary, Les Paul Chasing Sound, Paul recalls that when his brother flicked a light switch the light came on. When he flicked the switch he wanted to know why the light came on. He continued his search for a sound that no one had ever made before that led to his many inventions, took him to the top of the record charts in the 40s and 50s. Remember Mockingbird Hill and Vaya Con Dios with Mary Ford? Paul’s curiosity eventually took him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The DVD shows him being admired by musicians from Bing Crosby to Paul McCartney. An insatiable curiosity doesn’t retire at 65. At the age of 90, he won two Grammys at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played.

Gelb suggests several exercises to increase your curiosity, including make a list of 100 questions that are important to you. “Do the entire list in one sitting. Write quickly, don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or repeating the same question in different words.” Then go about finding some answers.

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The University vs. The Universe

The university has always been a poor substitute for the universe as a learning resource.

The world’s first universities were established in the 5th century CE in various places including Constantinople, Egypt, India, China, and Persia. The University of Pennsylvania, the first university in the U.S., was founded hundreds of years later in 1740 by none other than Benjamin Franklin. They performed adequately, if not always admirably, through the industrial age. These days they aren’t doing such a good job.

As John Naisbitt pointed out twenty plus years ago in his groundbreaking research on Megatrends, “Things are changing too fast for people to specialize their education.” Therefore, the most important skill to master is learning how to learn. “Tasks are going to change, careers are going to change. If you know how to learn, you can continue to grow. If you don’t you’re going to be handicapped.”

Now that the Internet brings the universe into our homes, if we know how to learn, we no longer need huge bureaucracies to standardize learning for us. Three sites allow all of us to listen to lectures covering just about any topic we’d like to learn.

TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, started out in 1984 as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes. This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public for free.

Academic Earth is an organization founded with the goal of giving everyone on earth access to a world-class education.

This non-profit is “working to identify these barriers and find innovative ways to use technology to increase the ease of learning.” It vows to give internet users around the world the ability to easily find, interact with, and learn from full video courses and lectures from the world’s leading scholars.

Launched less than two years ago, Apple's iTunes university offers college lectures on everything from Proust to particle physics to students and the public. Some universities make their lectures available to all, while others restrict access to enrolled students. New psychological research suggests that university students who download a podcast lecture achieve substantially higher exam results than those who attend the lecture in person.

Podcasted lectures offer students the chance to replay difficult parts of a lecture and therefore take better notes, says Dani McKinney, a psychologist at the State University of New York in Fredonia, who led the study.

As the iTunes website, explains, learning no longer happens only at a desk. Students now expect constant access to information, no matter where they are, which is exactly why more and more faculty are using iTunes U to distribute digital lessons to their students.

The next time you have an immediate need to learn something, check out these sites and learn from the best.

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Question Everything

Curiosity may be the primary ingredient for imagination innovation. It made Leonardo da Vinci the quintessential renaissance man. In his book, How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci, Michael J. Gelb lists curiosità: “An insatiably curious approach to life and an unrelenting quest for continuous learning” as the first of his seven Da Vincian principles. A later book, Innovate Like Edison, advises readers to “seek knowledge relentlessly.”

Albert Einstein famously said, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing.” But he also warned, “It’s a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

Maybe dropping out of high school allowed Les Paul to pursue his curiosity and develop the electric guitar and the recording innovations of overdubbing and multitrack recording. In the documentary, Les Paul Chasing Sound, Paul recalls that when his brother flicked a light switch the light came on. When he flicked the switch he wanted to know why the light came on. He continued his search for a sound that no one had ever made before that led to his many inventions, took him to the top of the record charts in the 40s and 50s. Remember Mockingbird Hill and Vaya Con Dios with Mary Ford? Paul’s curiosity eventually took him to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The DVD shows him being admired by musicians from Bing Crosby to Paul McCartney. An insatiable curiosity doesn’t retire at 65. At the age of 90, he won two Grammys at the 48th Annual Grammy Awards for his album Les Paul & Friends: American Made World Played.

Gelb suggests several exercises to increase your curiosity, including make a list of 100 questions that are important to you. “Do the entire list in one sitting. Write quickly, don’t worry about spelling, grammar, or repeating the same question in different words.” Then go about finding some answers.

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The Return of the Liberal Arts Degree

I’m not a big fan of Fox News. Calling yourself fair and balanced doesn’t make it so. I know this because I’m a good critical thinker, and my critical thinking skills come largely from my liberal arts background. In the 30 years since I earned my degree in sociology from the University of Colorado at Denver, the liberal arts have fallen more and more out of fashion, surpassed by the ubiquitous business major.

So I was more than a little surprised, when channel surfing during the Super Bowl, to find erstwhile Republican presidential candidate turned Fox talk show host Mike Huckabee holding forth on the advantages of a liberal arts degree. A college with an undecided major asked his advice on choosing a major. Go with liberal arts, he said, not to be confused with liberal politics. The more general degree offers exposure to different fields and arms the student with the capacity for adaptability and ability to retrain.

Steven Rothberg, founder and president of CollegeRecruiter.com, agrees. When interviewed by Fortune magazine, he explained, "Most employers look for candidates who are bright, well-rounded, and have some practical experience under their belts." A liberal-arts degree, plus good communications and computer skills, signal to recruiters that you'll be adaptable to a wide range of jobs.

Strong communications skills are the single most important attribute a candidate can have – as well as the one most lacking among job applicants, according to a poll of hiring managers by the National Association of Colleges and Employers.

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Five Ways to Squeeze as Much Learning as Possible from your Job

One of the benefits people look for from their jobs is the opportunity to learn and grow. Here are five ways to take advantage of the resources available:

1. Tuition Reimbursement. This is a huge benefit because education is something you don’t lose when the job ends. Even if you already have the degree(s) you want, find individual courses or certificate programs that will help in your career. Technology and innovation are moving so quickly now that there is always something new to learn. Online classes make sure that anything you want to learn is available wherever you are.

2. Corporate training. Take advantage of all the corporate training available. Make sure to document everything and add it to your resume or portfolio.

3. Informal on-the-job training. Most learning occurs casually, outside the classroom. Make it a point to learn whatever you can about the industry/company/department through discussions with your colleagues. Cross training can also be valuable and give you more flexibility for your next job.

4. Professional organizations. Join and participate in at least one professional organization related to your job, especially if the company pays for your membership. This gives you additional learning or certification opportunities and the chance to get to know people in your field from other companies—always a plus when job hunting.

5. Magazines, books, software. Use every resource available to enhance your skills. Even if you don’t have to know Visio (or whatever) in your current job, learn how to use it. The more you know, the more valuable you are to your employer and the more you have going for you in the job hunt.

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A Bachelor’s Degree: America’s Most Overrated Product?

Is college really worth it? That’s the question the John Stossel ABC News 20/20 asked in a provocative story last Friday. With the cost of college rising faster than inflation, Stossel wonders if a bachelor’s degree is the big lie.

The piece featured several students whose degrees saddled them with student loan debts of up to $125,000 and who ended up in entry-level jobs they could have gotten right out of high school. They understandably think "College was a rip-off.”

"You're led down this path of needing to go to college," he continued. "The college diploma is the new high school diploma."

Personal finance guru Suze Orman, who holds a BA in social work from the University of Illinois, says college is not for everyone. Those who are not the best students may be better off earning marketable skills at a community college or technical school.

Dr. Marty Nemko, an education consultant and career counselor, explains that the students who do well in college are already more likely to be successful than those who don't.

I have mixed feelings about this. I agree that college is not for everybody, but I am very glad I have a degree. On the other hand, it took me 12 years to earn my degree, partly because I refused to go into debt for it. Most of my students at the University of Phoenix are pursuing their degrees because they know or believe that they cannot go further in their careers without a degree. The lucky ones work for companies that pay their tuition.

While I know that a degree is the ticket required to enter certain professions, I also know that it is not a guarantee of success. And plenty of people who didn’t go to college do just fine. Maybe my most radical opinion is that a bachelor’s degree has intrinsic value and was never meant to provide job training.

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Persistence Pays

Bruce Johnson, the inventor of BreatheRight nasal strips describes in a commercial how he tried everything he could think of to open up his nasal passages and allow him to get a good night’s sleep. Among other materials, he tried padded paperclips and straws fitted inside his nostrils. Finally it dawned on him that he needed something to apply to the outside of his nose and BreatheRight strips were born.

Of course, it wasn’t quite that easy (it never is). First, he had to create a prototype and then make the rounds trying to sell it. Even after it finally sold to CNS, it took two more years to hit the shelves. The company sent samples to NFL trainers, and when it started showing up on football players, it really took off.

Johnson’s story illustrates several principles of innovation. First, Johnson is an engineer, and he spent time and effort trying to solve a problem he shared with millions of others. When his first ideas didn’t work, he didn’t give up; he persisted, trying different things until he finally found the solution. Being laughed out of a number of companies didn’t stop him either.

These are qualities I don’t see enough in my students. Too many of them expect to hit a home run their first time at bat. If they don’t earn an A on the first assignment, they get mad or give up. They blame me or the textbook or the university or anybody they can come up with—except themselves.

The students I like the most are the ones who utilize my feedback to focus their studies and try harder the next time. They accept responsibility for their own learning and seem determined to wring every bit of learning possible out of their education. God bless ‘em.

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Energize This

My theme this year is energy. All the problems I dealt with in the past few years have left me increasingly lethargic, sleeping too much and interested in too little. This year I want to reverse that momentum, and I’ve been researching how to do that without developing an addiction to caffeine-saturated energy drinks.

The holy trinity of increasing energy is diet, sleep, and exercise. I’m starting with exercise. Today, I will join my local recreation center (again) to lift weights and get back on track with walking at least 10 miles a week. I’ll keep a record of my progress on a calendar.

Beyond this triumvirate, I need to nurture more interest in my work and my life. This will come from getting off autopilot and exploring new ways to accomplish daily chores and new ways to turn problems into opportunities.

On the less philosophical side, I need to learn how to use my cell phone to surf the internet. Sometimes the small changes have the most impact.

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Some Assembly Required

Here’s a simple way to determine whether you are primarily a visual, auditory or kinesthetic learner. When you buy or receive something labeled with the three scariest words in the English language, some assembly required, how do you react?

Do you look at the diagrams, read the instructions, or just dive right in and try to figure it out yourself?

If you look at the diagrams, you are a visual learner.

If you read the instructions, you are an auditory learner.

If you dive in and figure it out for yourself, you are a kinesthetic learner. You’ve heard the expression, when all else fails, read the instructions, right? Strong kinesthetic learners won’t read the instructions even when all else fails. If they have to, they might have someone else read the instructions and then tell them what to do.

Of course, the smartest people are the ones who find someone else to put the thing together for them.

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Looking Back

Alyson Stanfield, the Art Biz Coach recently shared this list of year-end questions to evaluate progress over the last twelve months. With a few adjustments, I think it will work for just about anybody, artist or not. I plan to use it as a guideline for planning 2009.

How did you promote your art?
What did you do to enhance your online presence?
What technological skills did you learn or improve?
How many people did you add to your mailing list?
Who were the top ten cool or influential people you met?
Whom did you mentor or help out?
Did you create a new business card, portfolio, or other marketing piece?
What medium or skill did you attempt or master?
What did you try that was completely new?
What did you try that was uncomfortable, but helped you grow?
What worthy cause did you support in some way?
What new art events, galleries, and museums did you visit?
What resources did you discover?
How did you improve your studio habits?
What books did you read to help your career? What videos or films were useful?
What seminars/workshops/lectures did you attend or teach?
How did you enhance your office or studio environment?
What organizations were you involved with?
What grants/honors/awards did you receive?
What articles were written about your work?
What exhibits, grants, contest, etc. did you submit your art to?
Where did you save a wad of money?
What was the single best thing that happened to your art career in 2008?

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No Snow Day

It’s brutally cold in Denver: Minus 19° overnight and a high today of only about 20°. All I want to do is burrow in somewhere cozy and wait for warmer weather. One of the disadvantages of working or studying at home is that you don’t get any snow days. We didn’t get much snow out of this storm, so nobody’s getting a snow day today, and I thank my lucky stars that I didn’t have to join the rush hour madness this morning.

When I face new students at the University of Phoenix, one of the first things they always ask me about is weather cancellations. They react with surprise when I tell them that we just don’t do them. Denver’s national reputation for cold and snow aside, our weather really isn’t bad. The bigger issue, though, is that dealing with the impossibly full schedules of adult college students is extremely difficult. We can’t just cancel classes and forget about them; we have to make them up within the same week, a Herculean task.

Staying cheerful in freezing temperatures can be an adventure. Yesterday ten people showed up at my church to go caroling even though it was only 5°. We had a good time and maybe even brought a few people a little Christmas cheer.

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Gift of Time

Your gift this year is the secret to time management. It's elegant in its simplicity and so obvious that you'll wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. Interested? The secret to time management is this: Do less.

I know; you don't want to hear it. You want to know how you can continue doing everything you're currently doing and still have plenty of time left over to do MORE. Americans have succumbed to a cult of terminal busy-ness. This is the only country in the world with a national monument called Rushmore.

Part of this greed for time stems from our belief that time is money. It isn't. If time were money, you could put it in a savings account and use it whenever you chose. You could take out a time loan, then pay it back with interest. We would all carry time credit cards and live on borrowed time. Killing time, like destroying money, would be a federal offense.

Time has become our most precious commodity. If time were money, people would stand on street corners begging for spare time. You could buy extra time when you need it. For example, I could have bought an extra 24 hours to write this column -- and I could pay it back some day when I have the flu and time is really dragging.

If time were money, privileged people would have more than the rest of us. Instead, we all have the same 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. You can't earn more, no matter how hard you work. In fact, the harder and longer you work, the less discretionary time you have available. Remember, work expands to fit the time available.

No matter how lucky you are, you can't win more time. There is no time lottery. You can't put a nickel's worth of time into a slot machine and win back 500 minutes. If you spend your time doing something that doesn't turn out the way you wanted, you can't return the activity and get your time back.

On the other hand, we do experience time inflation. As we get older, an hour simply doesn't go as far as it used to. Scientists say that soon we may reasonably expect to live 150 years. Unfortunately, those are 21^st century years and they'll only go as far as about 75 years in the 20^th century.

Time isn't money. Your time is your life, so don't squander it on nonessentials. The only way to have an abundance of time is to use it only for things that really matter. That's my wish for each of you this year--that you will get less done and enjoy it more.

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Getting Down to Basics

Lifehacker, the blog offering tips and downloads for getting things done, recently ran a poll to determine their readers’ top basic skills. Among the top vote getters:

• Iron a shirt 4% (10598 votes)
• Put out a fire 4% (10468 votes)
• Install a graphics card 4% (10167 votes)
• Move heavy stuff 4% (10060 votes)
• Change a tire 4% (9750 votes)
• Jump start a car 4% (9495 votes)
• Grill with charcoal 4% (9142 votes)
• Tie a necktie 4% (8858 votes)
• Ditch your hard drive 4% (8821 votes)
• Fix a toilet tank flapper 4% (8526 votes)
• Sew a button on a shirt 4% (8512 votes)
• Shoot a home movie 4% (8500 votes)
• Shine shoes 3% (8067 votes)
• Perform the Heimlich 3% (8036 votes)

I’m not sure how many of these skills I would consider necessary. I mean, who irons shirts? It reminded me of a very different list from Robert A Heinlein’s book, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long:

"A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

My personal list would have to include keyboarding, and my students who never learned it agree that it is one skill that would really help them.

However, I recently found a quote from Steven Snyder that I might adopt as my personal mantra:

“The primary tool that one needs in modern day culture are to know how to make things up and how to figure things out. This is creativity in two of its forms. These are called imagination and problem-solving.”

Design-it-Yourself

“Success in life may have more to do with how you can accept and get started on the new game than with how good you got at playing any of the old ones.” David Allen

In the updated paperback version of Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, he has added a chapter on marketing. In the world of social networking, blogs, and search engine optimization, most college marketing curricula are hopelessly out of date. Businesses, of course, are desperate for people who understand the new media and can use it to promote the organization. Until the universities catch up, Anderson suggests a curriculum for in-house social media coaching:
• Who’s influential in our space (and how we know)
• What/who influences them
• How to get Digged
• Effective blogging
• Using beta-test invite lists as marketing
• The art of begging for links
• Stunts, contests, gimmicks, memes, and other link bait
• Sharing versus oversharing; how to know when what you’re doing is ready to be talked about.
The increasing pace of change guarantees that the business world cannot rely on academic institutions to keep their employees current with the latest technologies, attitudes and models. The lesson is that those who wish to stay in the forefront of their industry must learn to seek out resources and design their own customized learning projects.

Against the Grain

"I owe my success to having listened respectfully to the very best advice, and then going away and doing the exact opposite."
G. K. Chesterton

If you’re looking for an innovative idea to make your business stand out, think about doing the opposite of what everybody else is doing. If the conventional wisdom in your industry is to market products to giant corporations, maybe you could find an untapped niche in the small- or medium-sized market.

In this age of globalization, some companies make a distinct regionalism work for them. The Buckhorn Exchange restaurant in Denver is one example. It is our oldest restaurant, in continuous operation since 1893, and holds Colorado’s first liquor license. Thumbing its nose at political correctness, the historic building unabashedly displays hundreds of hunting trophies, Native American artifacts and Wild West memorabilia. The menu features buffalo, elk, pheasant and pot roast. People come from all over the world for this unique dining experience.

If you wrote a business plan today for a restaurant like this, funding agencies would probably laugh you out of the office. Much like Hollywood producers, banks are looking for the sequel to McDonald’s, not something completely different.

If your idea flouts conventional wisdom, chances are good that you will be on your own. That’s okay, because it also means that when you hit it big, you will reap all the profits. The thing about conventional wisdom is that it is so frequently wrong.

© Copyright 2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved

The Entrepreneurship Boom

“The biggest temptation is . . . to settle for too little.” Thomas Merton

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the ranks of the self-employed aged 55 to 65 rose 33 percent in 2006, while the number of self-employed 25- to 35-year-olds fell 2 percent.

In a related quarterly survey by outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas of its clients -- mostly managers and executives -- the number starting firms or turning to self-employment rose 29 percent in the first quarter of 2007 over the first three months of 2006. Of those, a staggering 88 percent were 40 and older.

A number of reasons might account for these statistics. Older people have a harder time finding a new job when they leave an old one, so some people may turn to self-employment as their last choice. Workers in their 50s and 60s may have lower living expenses, with a paid-off mortgage and grown, independent children. They may qualify for early retirement pensions that give them more financial freedom. All of these situations leave them freer to explore things they may have always wanted to do, but found impractical or impossible at an earlier age.

Articles about this phenomenon always refer to “aging baby boomers,” and while it is true we are getting older, I’d like to point out that everyone on the planet is aging, not just the baby boom generation. The possibility of starting a small business is one more reason to look forward to our later years.

© Copyright 2007 Dixie Darr. All rights reserved